Naming Etta Mae

naming a human is a seriously significant task.  and when you love the name of your eldest as much as i do, its intimidating to try and come up with another name that meets your standards and requirements and such.  i just love the name eden isimbi and its so incredibly perfect for her.  so i felt the pressure with baby girl number two coming.

we chose etta because we just liked it.  nothing too special to report there.  obviously the name came to me because of etta james.  personally i am a huge fan of american standards, and homegirl sang so many of them, i just can't imagine american music without her.  and i also thought that etta flowed so well with eden, so it stuck with me from the first moment i thought of it.  robert took a little longer to get on board, but once he did, he was all the way on board.  eden and etta.  done

uwera was an easy choice.  we want all our kids to have rwandan middle names so they can go by either (we frequently call eden isimbi, as do her rwandan friends and family). deborah, who is robert's niece and who was one of my first friends, is named uwera.  she was one of the first family members to really welcome me into the family, and she worked teaching me kinyarwanda with seemingly endless patience.  she is one of the most beautiful people ive ever known, inside and out,  so naming a daughter after her was a joy. done

the mae part came about at the last minute.  both of my mother's grandmothers had mae as a part of their double names; annie mae and minnie mae.  my mother casually suggested etta mae as a double name and i just loved it immediately.  robert felt the same way.  we did not really tell anyone about our choice, nor had we really solidified it, until shortly after she was born. i just looked at him and was like 'etta mae, right?' and he was like 'etta mae' 
etta mae uwera agaba. 

done.  

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